Updated Fast Solution for Quasi-Optical Beam Waveguides With Tilted FFT Beam Propagator

Abstract

An updated fast solution in modeling quasi-optical beam waveguides is reported, where several mirror reflectors are utilized for the beam transformation. The fast Fourier transform Poynting vector ray tracing between virtual apertures (FFT-PVVAs) algorithm has been introduced and applied in modeling the reflected beam, based on the FFT-accelerated beam propagator between parallel apertures, and the Poynting vector ray tracing for the mirror reflection. However, for designing and optimizing a beam path with multireflectors, it is desired that the accumulated precision loss due to the Poynting vector ray tracing can be further reduced. As a modification, angular spectrum transform-based beam propagator between oblique apertures is introduced, so as to reduce the ray tracing path length. The improved method is named as FFT-PVVA-tilted propagation (FFT-PVVA-TP). As validation, beam propagation in a four-mirror beam waveguide is simulated by FFT-PVVA, FFT-PVVA-TP, and physical optics integration. Numerical results suggest that FFT-PVVA-TP provides clearly better accuracy after four times of beam reflection.